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Poster review – What’s Your Number?

In this day and age, many movies come out in theatres every week. Competing with each other to attract as many viewers as possible. As a movie lover, what do I look for in a movie that will attract my attention? Well, for one, the cast. I believe I’m guilty of putting the story in second place at times, judging a movie by the actors it fosters. But, how do production companies attract attention? Well, this is where the movie poster comes in. THAT is the biggest piece of promotion (besides the trailer, of course) that movies use.

Today, I want to start with a movie that hit theatres this week. The particular poster I will be discussing from a graphic designer (and a movie goer)’s point of view is What’s Your Number?, with funny gal Anna Faris.

What's Your Number Poster

What first attracted my attention in this poster was the heart shape image created from the distorted typography. I love how the numbers are playfully placed and distorted, which tells us it’s a comedy. Blending the photo of Faris with the 2D graphic of the heart shape works very well, since the heart becomes her “chair”.

The clean and simple white background allows for the graphics and text to breath within the poster. There’s no clutter and the main idea is easy to grasp.

The title is cleanly centered underneath the main graphic, using a classy serif font, which is divided in two colours: black and pink. The clean and classy typography emphasizes the romantic nature of the movie (also made stronger by the pink), but the tight leading (pronounced “ledding” – aka, line spacing) makes sure that the title is not loosely spaced within the overall design and remains unified despite the two colours (notice how the question mark is black once again to “keep it together”).

Overall, the design is clean, the message is clear and there are no misconceptions about what the movie is about by looking at this poster.

Next time I will be discussing the poster for the movie J.Edgar by using two different designs to compare and contrast.